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What should I tell her.... yes or not possible?? Hmmmm..[&:]

Field Marshal O'Connor is away on leave at the moment. You'll have to wait until he returns for an educated and insightful response. In the mean time, know that the rest of us have been confined to base and have been busy working hard on bringing the boys home by Christmas.

My wife wants to give me COTA for Xmas .... whoops, got rid of the wife so I could play games ... so who is gonna give it to me? [:(]

Umm ... Santa .... err ... Dave ... [:D]

I'd like to give me CotA for Christmas.

So work harder, you lazy developers! [:)]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

Field Marshal O'Connor is away on leave at the moment. You'll have to wait until he returns for an educated and insightful response. In the mean time, know that the rest of us have been confined to base and have been busy working hard on bringing the boys home by Christmas.

Yep, the beta's are busy playing, err.. testing the game! [:D]

I must admit I'd love to buy myself this for Xmas. Can I pay the retail price to become a beta on the basis that I'll get a free copy of the game when it's released?

ORIGINAL: Banquet
Can I pay the retail price to become a beta on the basis that I'll get a free copy of the game when it's released?

Not so fast me hearty.
The cost to us Beta Bunnies of the constant lash of the cat by Field Marshal O'Connor (Brigadier, more like [:'(] ) is more than mere mortals can bear. Are you sure you want to PAY for that?
Be warned, all that glisters is not gold ...
Ray
(Groaning with pain.)

After multiple years of abuse dealing with the War in the Pacific beta, you really don't scare me Ray [:'(]

There is a reason my post count is as high as it is! [:D]

Oh well, if you are fully aware of what you would be taking on, I will sell you my place. Unfortunately I could only afford to give you £1,396.87. Wadya say? [;)]
Ray

...while the cats away![;)]

OK I'm back from Newcastle and I can see the natives are restless. The good news is that Paul Scobell, who now lives in Newcastle, and I met this week and together we believe we've solved the wretched out of sync bug that has bedevilled network play for several months. Joy oh joy!![:)]

We still have two other UI bugs that Paul is hoping to solve. In fact they may turn out to be the same bug even though right now they manifest as two separate ones. Once they are done, plus a few tweaks to some scenarios and I finish the manuals, we will be right to go. Whether it's done in time to go on sale before Xmas I just can't say, but we are giving it our all. Believe you me we need the $$$.

Welcome back Arjuna [:)] Boy am I glad you're back.. these guys were trying to sell me their beta status!! They're soo bad! You need to get this game out before they get totally corrupt!! [:D]

Of course, there is the issue (and I'm sorry if I piss on anyones fire) of when testing , manual,tidying up is complete (and I'd say, if they are as close to finishing as led to believe) then there are two weeks there - BUT you've then got the delay of going gold and all that goes with setting up before we can buy.

If I were a gambling man, and I'm not, I'd wager we won't see this game until the last half of January - at the earliest!

That said, I've got my cash ready. The Greek theatre doesn't really flick my switch, but I've been silently watching this - and I love the maps, supplies and tweaks to the interface. Besides, I never bought HTTR because I wanted to wait on this one - so it's going to be bought by me....so hurry up and prove me wrong!

There is no way Panther or Matrix will have this game out by Christmas. No chance whatsoever. They can not possibly do it by then...

Note that I use this same psychology on my 5 yr old: Do not eat that vegetable whatever you do. Don't you dare eat it...

[:'(]

Curiosity question ...

Certainly for games that will appear on retail shelves getting to market by December is a big plus.

However for games like COTA which I think will only be available via download and is probably not widely known among gift givers who are not themselves war gamers, do you think it has any impact on sales whether it gets out the door in December or not?

Note: This question is totally speculative and has no correlation with when COTA will go to market.

Thanks.

ORIGINAL: MarkShot
However for games like COTA which I think will only be available via download and is probably not widely known among gift givers who are not themselves war gamers, do you think it has any impact on sales whether it gets out the door in December or not?

I think it has an impact - last year I got a wargame for my Valentine - no kidding - my wife knows I'm a wargamer, so I make *very* sure she knows what games I like. she printed out the order-confirmation with the download details and put it in a *big* box - presto : a wargame as a present.

Recommended way of handling this : make a list with more than one game on it, it feels more like a surprise present that way and she feels more like she actually has chosen your present.

I'm very excited about what game I'll get this year.

And then there's the number of wargamers using (part of) their Christmas bonus to buy themselves a treat.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

Being out by Christmas really doesn't impact me. Nor do I see that it would be possible!

Besides, if it's a download only, then how would you wrap it?

Just make sure that there's enough bandwidth available for the downloads. Let's see...HTTR is under 500 MB...how much bigger is COTA?

I'll buy it whenever it comes out.. but, having said that, I am after a game from Xmas and it would be nice if this were it.. instead of buying something else (what to buy!?) and then this comes out a week later.

I'm sure I asked in about May when this was coming out, and was told a couple of months, so getting it out for Xmas can't be that hard can it?! [;)]

ORIGINAL: Banquet
...
I'm sure I asked in about May when this was coming out, and was told a couple of months, so getting it out for Xmas can't be that hard can it?! [;)]
...

It was about a year ago that I remember Dave announcing to us that it was time to finish off the game. I even remember spending a week working on a compilation of top player tips for the manual which I just updated a few weeks ago again.

Believe me, no one is more sincere than Dave when he gives out a date, but I suppose things just conspire against him. I guess we are all simply fortunate that Dave wasn't put in charge of Overlord or Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hilter would have all died of old age before there was an Allied landing on the Continent.

I can see from the updates on the forum that some great extra features have been put in the game, and that Dave's very responsive to feedback on the AARs, etc. I respect him very much for this and I'm sure CoTA will really be awesome when it's released. Not enough devs take the time to get things right before they release.

I think I'll probably faint when I see it's actually been released though! It's been nearly done for so long! About 6 months aqo I went back to playing HttR to get in the mood before release [:D]

Still, I have HoI2 1.3 to play in the meantime, so I can wait [:)]

ORIGINAL: Banquet
I can see from the updates on the forum that some great extra features have been put in the game, and that Dave's very responsive to feedback on the AARs, etc. I respect him very much for this and I'm sure CoTA will really be awesome when it's released. Not enough devs take the time to get things right before they release.

The problem with Dave is that he can't say no to a legitimate feature complaint (feature bug) and/or neat-sounding new feature request - which is good news for all of you, but bad news for his bank account. I guess you could say he loves you guys more than money

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

Hi all,

Thank you very much for your patience. Progress hasn't exactly been stellar paced this last few months. However, I am pleased to announce that we seem to have knocked on the head the very significant Out of Sync Network bug that has plagued us for many months. What a bugger and it was one line of code to fix ( once we found it ). On the other hand other bugs have taken many iterations of coding and recoding to finally clean them up. But this is only natural when you're dealing with over half a million lines of actual code.

I am desparately trying to sign off by Xmas. In which case Matrix will have it on sale in early January.